KYIV: A Russian missile strike sparked a blaze in the Ukrainian city of Sumy Saturday, while Ukrainian forces continued to push into Russia’s Kursk border region.
Two people were injured in the Sumy strike, which also damaged cars and nearby buildings, said Ukraine’s State Emergency Service. It said that the hit had involved an Iskander-K cruise missile and an aerial bomb.
Ukraine’s air force also said it had shot down 14 Russian drones overnight, including over the Kyiv region.
Meanwhile, fighting continued in Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian troops have been deployed since Aug. 6 in a bid to divert the Kremlin’s military focus away from the front line in Ukraine.
Alexander Kots, military correspondent with the pro-Kremlin newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, said that Ukrainian pressure in Kursk “is not weakening yet.”
“In the main sections of the ragged front, the situation has stabilized. But there are areas where the enemy continues to try to expand its bridgehead,” he wrote on his Telegram channel.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Friday that Ukraine had destroyed a bridge across the Seim River in the Glushkovsky district with US-made HIMARS rockets, marking their first use in the Kursk region.
Zakharova’s statement couldn’t be independently confirmed, although the Washington-based think tank the Institute for the Study of War said that geolocated footage published on Aug. 16 showed that the bridge had collapsed following the strike.
Russian military bloggers said that the destruction of bridges would impede deliveries of supplies to Russian forces, but not cut them off completely.
“No one has canceled the pontoons,” said Kots, stressing that the Seim River is smaller than Ukrainian waterways such as the Dnieper River. “And there are still smaller bridges.”
Russia has seen previous raids on its territory in the war, but the Kursk incursion is notable for its size, speed, the reported involvement of battle-hardened Ukrainian brigades and the length of time they have stayed inside Russia. As many as 10,000 Ukrainian troops are involved, according to Western military analysts.
The incursion, which Russian authorities say has led to the evacuation of more than 120,000 civilians, came as a shock to many, Yan Furtsev, an activist and member of local opposition party Yabloko, told the AP.
“No one expected that this kind of conflict was even possible in the Kursk region. That is why there is such confusion and panic, because citizens are arriving (from front-line areas) and they’re scared, very scared,” he said.
Ukrainian forces have also captured a number of Russian troops as they have moved across the region.
On Friday, the AP visited a detention center in Ukraine, the location of which cannot be disclosed due to security restrictions. Dozens of POWs were seen, some of them walking with their hands tied behind their backs while a guard led them down a corridor. Some had rations of a thin soup with cabbage and onions.
On Saturday, President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked Ukrainian soldiers and commanders for capturing Russian military personnel and said the country’s “exchange fund” that it would use to bargain for the return of Ukrainian POWs was being replenished.
“I thank all our soldiers and commanders who are capturing Russian military personnel, thereby advancing the release of our warriors and civilians held by Russia,” Zelensky said in a post on X.
Missile sparks blaze in Ukraine as Kyiv’s troops push into Russia’s Kursk region
https://arab.news/rj8g5
Missile sparks blaze in Ukraine as Kyiv’s troops push into Russia’s Kursk region
- Two people were injured in the Sumy strike, said Ukraine’s State Emergency Service
- It said that the hit had involved an Iskander-K cruise missile and an aerial bomb
Japan prepares to restart world’s biggest nuclear plant, 15 years after Fukushima
- apan has restarted 14 of the 33 that remain operable, as it tries to wean itself off imported fossil fuels
NIIGATA: Japan took the final step to allow the world’s largest nuclear power plant to resume operations with a regional vote on Monday, a watershed moment in the country’s return to nuclear energy nearly 15 years after the Fukushima disaster. Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, located about 220 km (136 miles) northwest of Tokyo, was among 54 reactors shut after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami crippled the Fukushima Daiichi plant in the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.
Since then, Japan has restarted 14 of the 33 that remain operable, as it tries to wean itself off imported fossil fuels. Kashiwazaki-Kariwa will be the first operated by Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), which ran the doomed Fukushima plant. On Monday, Niigata prefecture’s assembly passed a vote of confidence on Niigata Governor Hideyo Hanazumi, who backed the restart last month, effectively allowing for the plant to begin operations again.
“This is a milestone, but this is not the end,” Hanazumi told reporters after the vote. “There is no end in terms of ensuring the safety of Niigata residents.”
While lawmakers voted in support of Hanazumi, the assembly session, the last for the year, exposed the community’s divisions over the restart, despite new jobs and potentially lower electricity bills.
“This is nothing other than a political settlement that does not take into account the will of the Niigata residents,” an assembly member opposed to the restart told fellow lawmakers as the vote was about to begin.
Outside, around 300 protesters stood in the cold holding banners reading ‘No Nukes’, ‘We oppose the restart of Kashiwazaki-Kariwa’ and ‘Support Fukushima’. “I am truly angry from the bottom of my heart,” Kenichiro Ishiyama, a 77-year-old protester from Niigata city, told Reuters after the vote. “If something was to happen at the plant, we would be the ones to suffer the consequences.”
TEPCO is considering reactivating the first of seven reactors at the plant on January 20, public broadcaster NHK reported.
Kashiwazaki-Kariwa’s total capacity is 8.2 GW, enough to power a few million homes. The pending restart would bring one 1.36 GW unit online next year and start another one with the same capacity around 2030.
“We remain firmly committed to never repeating such an accident and ensuring Niigata residents never experience anything similar,” said TEPCO spokesperson Masakatsu Takata. Takata declined to comment on timing. TEPCO shares closed up 2 percent in afternoon trade in Tokyo, higher than the wider Nikkei index, which was up 1.8 percent.
RELUCTANT RESIDENTS WARY OF RESTART
TEPCO earlier this year pledged to inject 100 billion yen ($641 million) into the prefecture over the next 10 years as it sought to win the support of Niigata residents.
But a survey published by the prefecture in October found 60 percent of residents did not think conditions for the restart had been met. Nearly 70 percent were worried about TEPCO operating the plant.
Ayako Oga, 52, settled in Niigata after fleeing the area around the Fukushima plant in 2011 with 160,000 other evacuees. Her old home was inside the 20 km irradiated exclusion zone.
The farmer and anti-nuclear activist has joined the Niigata protests.
“We know firsthand the risk of a nuclear accident and cannot dismiss it,” said Oga, adding that she still struggles with post-traumatic stress-like symptoms from what happened at Fukushima.
Even Niigata Governor Hanazumi hopes that Japan will eventually be able to reduce its reliance on nuclear power. “I want to see an era where we don’t have to rely on energy sources that cause anxiety,” he said last month.
STRENGTHENING ENERGY SECURITY
The Monday vote was seen as the final hurdle before TEPCO restarts the first reactor, which alone could boost electricity supply to the Tokyo area by 2 percent, Japan’s trade ministry has estimated. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, who took office two months ago, has backed nuclear restarts to strengthen energy security and to counter the cost of imported fossil fuels, which account for 60 percent to 70 percent of Japan’s electricity generation.
Japan spent 10.7 trillion yen ($68 billion) last year on imported liquefied natural gas and coal, a tenth of its total import costs.
Despite its shrinking population, Japan expects energy demand to rise over the coming decade due to a boom in power-hungry AI data centers. To meet those needs, and its decarbonization commitments, it has set a target of doubling the share of nuclear power in its electricity mix to 20 percent by 2040.
Joshua Ngu, vice chairman for Asia Pacific at consultancy Wood Mackenzie, said public acceptance of the restart of Kashiwazaki-Kariwa would represent “a critical milestone” toward reaching those goals. In July, Kansai Electric Power, Japan’s top nuclear power operator, said it would begin conducting surveys for a reactor in western Japan, the first new unit since the Fukushima disaster.
But for Oga, who was in the crowd outside the assembly on Monday chanting ‘Never forget Fukushima’s lessons!’, the nuclear revival is a terrifying reminder of the potential risks. “At the time (2011), I never thought that TEPCO would operate a nuclear power plant again,” she said.
“As a victim of the Fukushima nuclear accident, I wish that no one, whether in Japan or anywhere in the world, ever again suffers the damage of a nuclear accident.”
